European colonies have also known white slavery, as Greek and Roman colonies knew it, and slavery of their own race and nation, as European countries knew it. Its most degraded type has doubtless been Spanish, English, and French convictism. The Australian-English is the most familiar and the worst. The Australian convict was a slave for life or a long term. Like the slave, he was at the mercy of his master, excepting that corporal punishment could not be inflicted by the master's hands. The lash was none the less kept going; in a single year, in New South Wales, nearly three thousand floggings were administered. The Roman _ergastula_ were pleasure bowers compared with the convict hells of Parramatta, in New South Wales, and Port Arthur, in Tasmania. Marcus Clarke's terrible fiction proves to be still more terrible fact. Convicts were herded together like pigs; kindness was rare, oppression general, and many fine men died inch by inch. Such was the state of things even after the introduction of the assignment system. According to that system, convicts were assigned as agricultural laborers and shepherds to settlers who cried out for them, as the American planters did for slaves. Craftsmen were allotted to high officials in lieu of salary or to influential persons who hired them to others (herein repeating English serfdom) or permitted them to work for themselves, receiving a portion of their earnings (herein repeating Greek slavery). Mechanics were employed on public works, and hundreds of buildings were erected by convict masons, bricklayers, and carpenters. Day laborers were employed on roads, and hundreds of miles of solid highway are a durable monument to the memory of the convict. They were the true pioneers of the country, braving the dangers of the "bush," resisting the aborigines, clearing and cultivating the land, and developing the resources of the colonies. For themselves they did well and ill. Many reformed, and after manumission, which was at first special and at length general, became respectable citizens, dealers, and traders. Some grew to be prosperous merchants, wealthy squatters, editors, legislators, and all but ministers. Their sons are judges, legislators, solicitors, Government officials, newspaper proprietors. After lasting for sixty years the system of transportation was at length abolished in consequence of the opposition of the working class, who objected to competition, and of the respectable classes generally. The legislative body and the large landowners were rather in favor of its perpetuity, and there are still members of the old "slave-driving party" in Tasmania who regret its discontinuance.